Posted by: thepinetree on 08/30/2010 02:15 PM
Updated by: Kim_Hamilton on 10/15/2010 04:20 PM
Expires: 01/01/2015 12:00 AM
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Mark Twain is Back! Festival to unveil an unpublished volume of his autobiography October 15th & 16th, 2010.....Tickets Still Available!
One hundred thirty-four years after he departed California and sailed East to transform American literature, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) is returning to the Pacific Slope. This year, 2010, is the centennial year of Clemens’s death, his 175th birthday, and the 125th anniversary of the American publication of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The setting for this uniquely Californian tribute to the master of American letters will be Angels Camp, Calaveras County. It’s a place still remarkably like what Twain experienced, of oak-studded hills, forests of pines, streams and rivers, of sturdy brick and rock buildings, and, today, of vineyards and award-winning wineries.....
Angels Camp, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, is where Mark Twain gathered the material for his comic tall-tale classic, “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.” An annual “Jumping Frog Jubilee,” a frog-jump competition held each May, still commemorates his work.
This inaugural festival will celebrate and honor the legacy of one of America’s most renowned writers and humorists with events and activities over the weekend of October 15-16, 2010. Activities will also take place at the Angels Camp Museum throughout the weekend, and they will be open on Sunday as well. Tickets for the events will go on sale August 30 including package pricing that include all the events and lodging through the Calaveras Visitor’s Bureau at (209) 736-0049. Lodging available at the Angels Inn and Gold Country Inn. More information is available at www.marktwainfestival.org.
Friday, October 15th
Bret Harte Theater, Angels Camp
7pm - Debut performance of Ron Powers’ new play about Samuel Clemens, “Sam and Laura” – presented by the University of Missouri Drama Department. Powers is the author of the 2005 biography of Mark Twain, “Mark Twain: a Life” and of other works centering on Clemens and on Hannibal, Missouri, where both Powers and Sam Clemens spent their childhoods. Powers also is the co-author of the acclaimed work, “Flags of Our Fathers.”
“Sam and Laura” is based on a true story from Clemen’s life, according to Powers, who discovered its essence while researching the biography. It centers on a lifelong infatuation Twain developed over a young girl he met while working as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi. “‘Sam and Laura’ is a commemorative play for this century, and it is also a play as timeless as are dreams, love, loss and yearning,” he writes.
Saturday, October 16th
Greenhorn Creek, Camps Restaurant
10A.M. – Symposium on the life and work of Samuel Clemens presented by scholars from the Mark Twain Project at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, who have recently completed a comprehensive “autobiography” with previously unpublished material written by Clemens. A pre-publication release of Volume 1 of that work will be available for purchase at a very low price. Greenhorn Creek, CAMPS Restaurant, Angels Camp. The first volume, of three to be published, totals about 600 pages. Editors of the work are expected to be on hand to speak and answer questions about the project.
2 P.M. - Matinee Performance of “Sam and Laura” (Bret Harte Theater, Angels Camp)
6 P.M. - Gala Evening– An evening celebrating Mark Twain with Ron Powers, author of “Mark Twain, A Life,” a New York Times Bestseller (Greenhorn Creek, CAMPS Restaurant). 6 P.M. cocktail reception; 7 P.M. dinner, and “Trouble at 8!” The California Press Association will present the first Mark Twain Award to Samuel Clemens for his contributions to the journalism and literature of California. The evening’s entertainment will include music of the Gold Rush era as well as live and video performances by McAvoy Lane, an internationally known Mark Twain impersonator, and video presentation with Will Durst, a San Francisco political satirist who carries on the “stand up” tradition of social comment pioneered by Mark Twain.
Tickets for the entire festival are $120 to $130, for the gala they are $90 at 736-0049; visit marktwainfestival.org for more information.
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